


A Hundred Horizons

by g00n



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Fanfiction, First Love, M/M, Phthia, Slow Burn, fanmade, lost journals, my first post
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21984913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/g00n/pseuds/g00n
Summary: A collection of TSOA fanfictions written by g00n. Some parts may have adjoining plot points but in general, these can be read individually.
Relationships: Achilles/Patroclus (Song of Achilles)
Kudos: 12





	A Hundred Horizons

I’m sure I’ve contracted some kind of disease, my arms feel weighted with lead by the wrists and shoulders, my legs are unfaithful and threaten to let me crash into a heap. (Must I crawl away from the lighted hallways, I feel bare in their presence.) My heart is beating a thousand miles a minute for no reason I can explain unless I recount the unnerving, yet bewildering insomnia dotted night step by unsure step. These thoughts in my head fly so fast, around and around that I cannot grasp them in my fists. Help me, Athena. Gods my lips are quivering, my jaw is unhinging then tightening again as if I want to unleash a secret from within my bound chest, but I cannot find the words or the soul to relay.

  
GODS WHY DO YOU THINK OF HIM?

  
It’s insane. Why have I only gathered up the clues now, they were dangling in front of my face! Insolence Patroclus, did you not connect it, was your mind so disconnected; so listless and carefree; that you did not notice the closeness? The intimacy that was leagues different from what others can scavenge from him. You can tell, dream even, that what he does is fair to all but in truth, it is not.

Let me be completely honest, in humble and shy fashion, that my realization and perception were slow to bloom. But they came. Oh, gods they came, they rolled in like the tide, the roared in like thunder and cried like a child to be noticed and pondered. And reality slapped in the face. I flush at the memory, but it still lingers in my mind.

Achilles held me in a clinging embrace, tight and hard against the skin of my abdomen. I felt the pressure. My eyes fluttered open as I saw myself drafted in shadow while Achilles was bathed in moonlight from the open terrace. His face buried into my side, silver hair spilled from his shoulders like a bundle of threads made of moonlight. I always questioned that, his hair, it was strikingly brilliant. Do his servants brush his hair with gold or silver every morning and tirelessly then re-apply a new coat the next? It puzzles me, their tradition, to decorate the heir to the throne-like some ornament, though they all knew he would come back from his great adventures coated in mud and blood. It was so different than my old home, more extravagant and laid-back. And in blunt comparison, Opus had the air of treachery and gossip. They lathered me in lead, dragging me deeper into the shadows until needed for a public appearance. Useful I suppose, to an image my father wanted to compare to other great kings of greater kingdoms.

His pearl skin was a contrast to my own, dark and darker during the night. I’m again puzzled by every little detail and consider every aspect, taking in what my eyes could see in the dim light. That is why I lay at night, eyes turned to the starch white ceiling, lost and sometimes drowning in thought. Losing the hours until dawn comes and claims more energy than my mind. Sometimes people find me, asleep on the floor or chair somewhere, and many have rocked me awake to assure that one of the boys was alive and well. Or they feared King Peleus’ anger if someone had found me dead. It was silent and always resulted in a firm hand and a deadly stare.

Achilles mumbled and nudged his brow deeper into my side. I didn’t stir, but my eyes trail down his neck and dived over his shoulders. I have forgotten what it feels like to have a bed to myself, take all the length of the sheets and wrap myself into a cocoon. We both have fallen into the habit of being at each other’s sides. A hush of a goodnight between us and the light is blown out. Sometimes we talk, and those are rare moments when the conversation leads us to be late for breakfast the next morning, tousled and sleep still hanging over our eyes.

At first, I did have a bed. It was cramped beside his belongings and chests, the farthest from the open terrace that overlooked farming fields. Rarely, he brings women or men when I am reading or playing the lyre. Shocked and bashful, I’ve tried to squeeze myself into the corner, wishing somehow, by the gods will I would slip through the cracks. 

It doesn’t work. 

He would smirk and hold the woman on his lap, or a hand to the man’s ass, and slip it deeper when he felt playful enough. He or she would giggle into his shoulder or, if they were modest and pure, try to slip up their chiton up their bare chest. Routinely, I stood up after a few moments, awkwardly shuffling, face towards the wall, then slipping through the crack in the door, face burning. (Though it wasn’t obvious with my complexion.) It happened so many times that I could determine when he would take one into the room we shared. 

One day, he was there when I was sure he was with a village girl. He laid open, limbs splayed out as if dead on the bed. I took a step back, and searched the room, waiting in complete silence for a woman to waltz through an unseen corner. 

**“There is nobody here but the two of us.”** I jumped at his voice since I had developed the skill of avoiding him for the past few months unless it was at night. We still shared the same room. I saw his face contort into a smile, full of lustful glee. **“What expecting someone to come in and have fun with me?”**

Honestly, I didn’t know how to answer him bluntly. I opened my mouth, closed it then opened it again when thoughts came in and flew out as I tried to form the words in my throat. A simple “No” was all I could say.

He stood, still a handful of inches taller than me and walked out into the hallway. I gulped as he disappeared. The fruit caught my eye in his absence, the pomegranate fruit innocently laying in his sheets, split open and spilling juices and seeds. 

I replaced his sheets and profusely apologized to the servants as they carted off the whole of Achilles’s bedsheets. And when I told then how, the underlying seduction of the fruit surfaced, bobbing up and down in everyone’s mind. Even my own. I rubbed my temple and kept pushing the sheets in their already overflowing arms. They giggled behind their palms and briskly walked away, a blur of giggles and excitement. 

Annoyed, I threw my only cotton stuffed pillow at his bed, originally his. The extra bed was also his, when he was a child, left to rot in storage. Everything I had is his or either was something he had outgrown. Clothes he had outgrown and kept in trunks, defective sandals meant for his feet, and books he had already finished and tucked into the folds of his mind. 

That night I slept fleetingly, in periods of minutes, my head on top the crook of my arm, cheek pressed against bone. I shifted my hips, uncomfortable and aching with thin mattresses. 

Achilles snorts in his sleep, soundly like a baby. I gritted my teeth and shift again, the wood creaking under my weight. 

**“For the god’s sake,”** My head snaps to him. I know our eyes roll over each other in the dark and noise of insects outside die out to the thrum of his voice. **“** **Bring up the sun if you want** **”**

**_“_** ** _Care to lend me a chariot then?_** ** _”_** I reply and flip onto my stomach, hands cupping my chin. The wind beats on my back and the drapes, the storm bristling the fringes of the kingdom. I smell the incoming rain. A shiver ran across my body and I tightly twined my legs together, scavenging for warmth within myself. I closed my eyes, though they feel as if I rolled them onto the ground during midday, raw and dry.

I heard Achilles rustle and press down on his bed, the wood beams creaked under him. I squeezed my eyelids shut, hoped in a few minutes the feeling of rawness would leave, for him to leave. I need sleep, I thought. I need– 

**“Come here, Patroclus.”** He said. 

I froze. Air was caged in my lungs and I prepared to be cut into pieces, a piece of prey before hunters. 

A handful of moments’ walk by us, and then sheets of rain poured down, thunder clapped in the distance. 

**“Are you awake?”** He asked into the darkness.

The numbness was merciless as I lost touch to the tingling sensation in my feet, in my hands and my core.

**“Patroclus.”**

**_“Yes?”_ **

**“Are you cold?”**

It was cold. I curl my lips into a half-smile. As if he could see me, I thought about him smiling and grinned wider. I cupped my hand over my mouth. Idiot. 

**_“Yes,”_** I responded and stoned my expression.

I heard the patter of his footsteps. But to my shock, I could smell him before I felt his hands touch my shoulder. The air around him smelled like a grove. He smelled like a plane of olive trees, flowers, and spring. Then his hand landed next to my neck and slid, a bit uncomfortable, to my shoulder. It was baffling, how soft and supple it was, it wasn’t how I expected a born king and warrior’s hand would feel like. His hands fell down the length of my arms and then he grasped my wrist. Achilles pulled me behind him. Clumsily, I stepped onto the sheet he had wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. He let go and I stood there, dazed as he crawled back in the bed, it moaned again, almost painfully under the returned weight. 

I ran my tongue over my teeth in confusion and grasped my arm, waiting in silence. 

Achilles grunted then patted, though more of slapped aggressively, the empty side of the bed. I realized, _my side_.

I quietly slipped beside him, knowing there was heat radiating from his back. His back? Confusion rushed over me and I jumped at the touch of a smooth linen blanket, crawling up my stomach. Embarrassing. 

**“What?”** He asked his voice unbearably near. I scooted more to the edge. 

**_“Nothing.”_** I took the small portion of the blanket and curled into it. Warmth circulating back into my body. 

**“Goodnight Patroclus.”**

**_“Goodnight, Achilles.”_ **

I wanted to dig my head into the wall. I know it’s not a problem; men with men. I think of more foolish thoughts than smart ones. ~~Athena has forsaken me and my family with the ability to think straight.~~

At first, I thought it would last a few days, but Achilles had not given me ample time to act. He had the old bed taken away. Before I could ask anyone for anything for my own, everyone knew. At night, I close my eyes knowing we are far from touching, but in the morning, I find him attached to me or I’m attached to him or both at the same time. Not just my torso, my arms as well and sometimes he twines his legs in mine. But something is always regular and accounted for, his face is pressed against my skin or I’m pressed against his chest in large and iron made arms. 

He dominates the bed and that is extremely unfair. (As if bed space is as tactical as war.) 

It has grown on me that this is something princes do that I was never exposed to. I do not mind it much, except for his loud mumbles at night when I am up, and he is completely knocked out. 

Today, I’m going to the track with Anaxagoras. I’m asking, praying, this heat dies down within me. I don’t want to see him. It’s almost impossible since my days start and end with gold.


End file.
